 335  Goddess Bat And the confusion with Hathor Mohamed Gamal RASHED Bat was an early buffalo goddess who appears to have been played an importance and powerful role in the pre-dynastic and early historical times. Even before the appearing of the other great goddesses through the historical times. Bat was worshiped as the great goddess of heaven, the celestial cow, which appeared in some witness from the prehistory and pre- dynastic period, such as; Girza palette, an ivory bowl of Hierakonpolis and a seal impression from Om-el-Qaab, in her usual aspect and surrounded by five stars. She is supposed to be the first representative goddess of the sky, according to these Predynastic witnesses, even before Neith and Hathor. 1 She had played her protective, national, fertility roles, as the main goddess in these times, according to her several witnesses which were founded around Egypt in these early times. 2 Her name is apparently a feminine form of the word 'BA’ 'soul' and it means 'female spirit' or 'female power'. Her name was known from a diorite vessel from Hierakonpolis, 3 1 st dynasty, as her symbol carved in sunk relief on the flat upper surface of the rim, showing the characteristic human face with buffalo's ears and horns, accompanied by the bird sign 'bA’ 'Jabiru stork’ or 'the Saddlebill stork'. 4 Then on the stela of Hesu, 6 th dynasty 5 (UC 14312) in the name and title of his wife 'Nfrt-BAt' ; and occurred often in the title ' HqA BAt 6 from the 4 th dynasty. Also her name appeared in some religious texts from the Old and Middle Kingdom: , ; 7 ; 8 , 9 . 10 Goddess Bat was depicted in her image as a human head, with a human female face, ears and horns of buffalo, curved up inwards, in frontal view. 11 Sometimes she appeared with a full bovine head and face (see Girza palette). As the author has suggested before, this depiction is like an ancestral cow, Bos primigenius opisthodomus, or an African buffalo, Syncerus sp. (pl. VIa). 12 As her iconography involved a complicated matter, concerning the original animal from which Bat took the shape of her horns and ears, as it is not in the shape of the cow which is depicted with horns turned outwards as appears in the Hathor horns, and also these horns do not look like the horns of the Asian cows, as Fischer suggested. 13 One also could suggest that this depiction is more accepted as an African buffalo, Syncerus sp. 14 As the ancient Egyptian people who dwelled the western desert in the prehistory times probably put pendants around their and their animals' necks, in addition to the relation between the main worship place of Bat (in the 7 th Nome of Upper Egypt) and the Western desert. About the absence of her depiction in the full human form, one could explain it through indicating the goddess Bat role in the Legend of Horus and Seth. As a text mentioned a battle in the river between them, after it Horus had cut his mother Isis's head, when she helped Seth against him. After that the Myth taking about replacing her head with a cow or buffalo head; which were thought by many of Egyptologists to be Hathor’s head, 15 the famous cow